Stonebloom

A new competitive abstract strategy game that fuses Go and Shogi into a video game. A 4X-style duel, in ten minutes. Stonebloom combines Go's tension of surrounding territory with Shogi's tactics of units that each play a different role, translated into the kind of clear, countable numbers only a video game can offer. Go's territory scoring is compelling, but famously vague and hard to count. Stonebloom replaces it with VP (Victory Points), earned simply by placing units on marked spots on the board — so it's always clear at a glance who's ahead. Every unit deals damage simultaneously to all enemy units adjacent to it, but that attack power is split across however many enemies it's facing — so the more a unit is surrounded, the less damage it lands on each individual target. Meanwhile, the surrounded unit is taking that same divided damage from every attacker at once, compounding its disadvantage. This is the core of what we call the Four-Directional Split Simultaneous Damage System: the more you surround, the stronger your position; the more you're surrounded, the weaker yours becomes. This push-and-pull grows even deeper with Shogi-style units that each play a different role — infantry, cavalry, heavy units, and more. Stonebloom also carries over Shogi's most exciting hook: attacking your opponent's king. Here, that means assaulting their Mother Rock. The board starts completely empty, and RP (resource points) let you produce new units, adding a fresh layer of expansion and sheer numbers to the fight. No knowledge of Go or Shogi required — one glance at the VP count tells you who's winning.